"Come in and speak; conversing with you through the seal is quite draining. Rest assured, I mean you no harm. Though I am sealed now, dispatching you, even across this barrier, remains possible," the aged voice spoke slowly, laced with exhaustion.

Ye Chen's eyes flickered as he fixed his gaze upon the ancient, fiery palace. After a brief moment of contemplation, he said, "Senior Fire-Blood Phoenix, while I believe what you say is true, I still request further confirmation. If you can provide the complete secrets of the third stage of the Blazing Mystery Codex, then I will trust you."

"The Blazing Mystery Codex?" A trace of contemplation emanated from the flame palace. After a while, it slowly resumed, "Are you referring to the Yan God’s Power of Faith that Yan God left for his descendants? Perhaps the name has changed, but the energy should be similar to yours. It is also divided into three stages. Upon reaching the third stage, one can summon a part of Yan God’s body from the void. Though it is a phantom body of Yan God, its power and aura are absolutely identical."

Ye Chen’s eyes flashed. "That is the exact manual."

"Very well." The aged voice within the flame palace sighed softly. Then, before the eyes of all present, the soaring flames atop the palace suddenly rolled back, burning slowly in the sky. Every single flame rapidly morphed into characters inscribed with vigorous brushwork, dancing across the heavens like dragons and phoenixes in flight.

Ye Chen quickly focused his gaze. He saw that the sky-filling flame characters were exceedingly long, written in the exclusive font of the Yan God Empire’s nobility, which an uninitiated person might not even recognize. However, with just one glance, his heart jolted: the secrets of the Blazing Mystery Codex recorded in the vast expanse of text were word-for-word correct!

Ye Chen nodded. "Senior Fire-Blood Phoenix, I apologize for any previous offense. We are entering now; where should we proceed from?"

"No offense taken. It is good for a young man to be cautious, lest you dig a pit for yourself and end up buried without even realizing how you died. Enter through the main gate; I will suppress the flames for you." The aged voice spoke slowly. Immediately, at the main entrance of the flame palace, the dense, viscous flames, like molten rock, swiftly parted, revealing a crimson metal door. To the naked eye, the air before this metal door appeared to visibly warp, as if on the verge of melting from the intense heat.

Ye Chen pinched his fingers and cast a Wind Barrier over everyone, isolating some of the external temperature. Then, he executed the Ice and Snow Profundity, layering a Frost Barrier inside the Wind Barrier, causing everyone to feel as if they were wrapped in a world of extreme arctic ice.

In any other location, executing such an Ice and Snow Profundity might have made cultivators like Bailong shiver from the cold due to their constitution. But here, with the temperature so overwhelmingly powerful, this Ice and Snow Profundity, capable of freezing anything, only managed to slightly lower the oppressive external heat. Nevertheless, everyone still felt scorching hot, as if their blood were churning and boiling, threatening to burst out through their pores.

Ye Chen led the way toward the front gate. With every step closer, the temperature surrounding his body doubled. By the time they reached the doorway, they were all drenched in sweat, pouring off them ceaselessly.

If they entered through that metal door, what terrifying temperatures awaited them inside?

Ye Chen had no time to ponder. He stood at the threshold, about to inquire further, when he saw the metal door slowly swing open. Inside was a world permeated by burning flames. Scorching heat waves rushed out, making it feel as if they were standing on burning, desolate earth; even their eyebrows felt like they were igniting.

Ye Chen frowned but did not pause. He stepped directly inside.

Bailong and Zhuge Fan’s faces were flushed crimson, sweat streaming down their clothes before it was rapidly evaporated. After all of them had entered the flame palace, the flames before Ye Chen and the others suddenly rolled back. From the center of the fiercely burning world of fire, a towering and magnificent black iron gate slowly emerged.

Ye Chen looked at this black iron gate; it seemed vaguely familiar, as if he had seen it before, but upon trying to recall, he couldn't place it.

"If you can open this door, why not go out?" Bailong asked quickly, suppressing the searing heat emanating from his body.

"The flame palace is merely an illusion formed by the flames overflowing from my body; it can be solid or illusory. What truly seals me is not the flame palace, but this," the aged voice stated slowly.

The flames burning before Ye Chen and the others slowly parted like a tide to the sides, revealing a stretch of cracked, scorched earth in the center. At the far end of this fiery, desolate ground stood the black iron gate, framed by pillars of black iron, each as thick as a dozen men, standing like eternal, unmelting ice, arranged in the form of a prison cell.

As everyone watched, a fiery red pupil, filled with an eerie strangeness and cold indifference, slowly materialized from the darkness behind the black iron pillars. Then, under the illumination of the firelight, its entire form manifested before Ye Chen and the others behind the bars of the black iron prison.

Everyone gasped.

It was a phoenix of near-perfect divine majesty, covered entirely in fiery red feathers, sharp and dense, as if etched from metal. Its fiery red pupils held an aloofness that surveyed everything, possessing an indescribable, chilling eeriness.

"This, this is the Fire-Blood Phoenix!" Yue Ling swallowed hard.

"You bringing my feather here—has something major happened in the Ancient World?" the aged voice came from behind the black iron prison.

Yue Ling felt an overwhelming pressure wash over her. Although she knew the Fire-Blood Phoenix was sealed, the terrifying might it exuded even in confinement suggested what an utterly dreadful existence it must be when unleashed.

Her small body trembled before the massive black prison. "Yes, yes, Senior. The Ancient World is undergoing a pillaging. Many of the headless ancient corpses that appeared during the last Great Sage War are crawling out from beneath the ground of the Ancient World, and humanity is on the brink of collapse. I learned from our clan’s ancestral teachings that only by finding the Fire-Blood Phoenix with the Divine Fire Token can we obtain your protection."

The Fire-Blood Phoenix sighed lightly, as if it had already known. It wasn't overly surprised. "I suspected as much; they have indeed become the slaves of those madmen. The Ancient Gods Clan, who once dominated the Ancient World and rode across the plains, has now been reduced to slaves. A tragedy..." Its voice was filled with boundless lamentation.

Ye Chen and the others shuddered in horror. "Those headless ancient corpses are the Ancient Gods?"

To ordinary people, "Ancient Gods" were abstract concepts, but every powerhouse in the Epoch Realm knew those two words represented Supremacy, invincibility, and a (overbearing might) that swept aside all opposition!

Through countless eons, even though the Ancient Gods had vanished from the continent, their myth remained an indelible epic, recorded most frequently in the lore left behind by many supreme experts.

The vicissitudes of time had reduced the once dominating Ancient Gods Clan to mere servants of the Heart Realm, being herded by the Corpse Herders they created, treated like mere livestock!

What humiliation! What tragedy!

Yue Ling couldn't help but ask, "Why would the people of the Heart Realm enslave them only to sever their heads, leaving them without even a complete corpse? Did the great family that founded the Heart Realm have some deep-seated hatred for the Ancient Gods Clan? But the Ancient Gods only emerged after the Primordial War, when the world was divided; how could they have enmity with the people of the Eight Great Families?"

The Fire-Blood Phoenix sighed softly and slowly replied, "The Ancient Gods have existed since the dawn of time. What you know encompasses only the Nine Heavenly Gods. In reality, before the Primordial Continent fractured during the Primordial War, there were ten Heavenly Gods in total! And this Ancient God was the most powerful among them, unrivaled to a degree no one could match. The primeval monstrous beast you know as the Great Dao was that Ancient God's mount back then!"

Everyone’s minds were somewhat stunned.

The origins of the Ancient God were so ancient! And this Ancient God was one of the Nine Heavenly Gods, yet all historical records concerning the Ancient Gods began after the Primordial War, and not a single surviving secret text from that era mentioned this specific deity.

Ye Chen felt something stir deep within his mind—a fleeting, blurry image flashed: sounds of killing and roaring, and one heaven-shattering cry of rage, before everything returned to silence. The vision vanished instantly, too indistinct to clarify.

The Fire-Blood Phoenix tilted its head, gazing into the distance, its eyes seeming to pierce through flame and spacetime, witnessing scenes from countless epochs ago. "In those days, the Ancient God reigned supreme but was naturally detached, always remaining hidden, preferring to wander the mortal realms for recreation. He neither gathered large numbers of talents to join his lineage and develop descendants, as the founders of the Eight Great Families did, nor did he construct temples across the world to gather Faith Power like the other Nine Heavenly Gods, hoping to break the limits of this world and earn a personal audience with the Ancient Realm Emissary for ascension."

"However, his greatest pleasures in life were fine wine and women, so naturally, he spawned many descendants. Some of these offspring were born to mortal women, yet possessed the strength of a Divine Emperor at birth, and could reach the Epoch Realm upon adulthood without exerting any effort. Such terrifying bloodline power was precisely the reason he eventually incurred mortal danger."

"His descendants were too numerous, and those descendants would reproduce, generation after generation. Within a few hundred years, the population swelled to over a hundred thousand, and that doesn't even count the offspring born to some wastrels who found women outside. In this manner, a clan slowly took shape."

"The Ancient God did not wish for his descendants to roam freely across the world for fear of causing trouble, so he specially cleaved open a separate dimension: the Ancient Realm Peak! The Ancient God settled all his descendants within the Ancient Realm Peak. Yet, the impending disaster could not be avoided..."